The Luminous Landscape checks in with their first look at the drool-worth Fuji X100.

Me likey.

His review answers one of my big questions about the buttons and functions. The ISO setting can be mapped to the FN button on top, which unfortunately prevents you from using that button for any other important custom function (like the built-in filters or Auto-ISO). Bummer. Just putting “Auto ISO” on the same screen as all the other ISO settings would solve half that problem, at least. My Panasonic and Olympus digital cameras got that right, and it seems so obvious that I’d bet all the others do too.

I didn’t even see that FN button.

So, other than some UI gaffes that could be fixed later with a firmware update, it looks as awesome as promised. Gimme gimme gimme.

Too bad I’m out of the digital camera market for the time being. I’ve been more than happy with my Panasonic G1 and a pile of lenses (7-14/4, 14/2.5, 20/1.7, 45/2.8, and the 14-45 kit lens that I’ve used once or twice); with that sort of investment, if I wanted to spend $1,200 on a digital camera right now, I’d probably upgrade to the Panasonic GH2, but even then I might wait another generation so that I’d really be buying major advance in image quality, instead of a merely marginal one. Digital cameras get so depressing if you bother to think about how rapidly they depreciate, and how quickly, and probably wrongly, we believe that they’re obsolete.

Speaking of things that go obsolete, right now I’m shooting with one of these with a 35mm lens and black-and-white film (the actual, light-sensitive, comes-on-a-roll variety), which I don’t particularly love but I’m trying out as an exercise. More on that later. (Update: Here, actually.)